Photography

The Tween's Day

Luke is turning 12 today. I'm waiting for him to just grow up overnight, literally, and I'll wake up one morning and have to look up to him instead of smiling down into his beautiful blue eyes. I know from experience that it's the way boys work.

We try to celebrate birthdays low key here, while also making a big deal of things. I know, it just doesn't make sense. But we just don't go overboard on parties and gifts and such. I'm the most un-materialistic person ever, and am not a gift person either, so it's not in my nature to lavish with parties and gifts. We give a meaningful gift, bake a cake, hang the birthday banner, and blow up balloons. That's kind of what we do. But we love to make the birthday person feel special for their special day. Especially Luke, who lives for this kind of stuff.

So the teens hung the special birthday banner and blew up balloons after Luke went to bed tonight so that he'd wake up to a mini party in the morning. Poor Jack spent a full five minutes barking at the balloon outside his crate until I went downstairs to move it. The dog is scarred for life. Luke is going to have a rocking birthday tomorrow, and Jack will cower in his crate. No fear of that dog eating too much cake, that's for sure. Poor Jack.

But I'm heading out of town tomorrow, and will be gone by the time Luke gets home from school. That's no fun for a birthday boy, so I made the executive decision to keep him home with me and have a mom-and-Luke day. Academics rank pretty far down on my list in the general scheme of life. Sure, education is important - incredibly so! - but missing a day of school isn't going to hurt anyone. Missing a birthday may scar this mom for the rest of her life. I didn't labor 9 hours to bring that boy into the world just to miss his only 12th birthday, you know.

So Luke and I are playing hookey. This is what memories are made of, and this is one of the many, many ways that I let my kids know that they are that kind of important to me. If I take a day off work, and pull him from school, just so we can spend time together on his birthday, he better believe that he's my number one 12 year old son.